Category Archives: society

Golden spike or no golden spike – we are living in the Anthropocene

Posted on March 7, 2024 by Chris Rowan

This is not going to go well. After 15 years of discussion and exploration…Twelve members of the International Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) voted against the proposal to create an Anthropocene epoch, while only four voted for it. To be … Continue reading →

Categories: climate crisis, deep time, geology, public science, society

We are late bending the climate change curve – but bending it still matters

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Chris Rowan

The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced us to the idea of ‘bending the curve’: that acting early to reduce infection rates made a huge difference in whether the peak in infections was manageable or not. The exponential nature … Continue reading →

Categories: climate crisis, geological thinking, society

Content warnings when talking about disasters on social media

Posted on November 10, 2022 by Chris Rowan

Like many others as Twitter continues its apparent spiral towards death eternally gridlocked dysfunction, I have been testing the waters on the distributed social network Mastodon. So far, I’ve been quite enjoying it, but it has been a big system shock … Continue reading →

Categories: bloggery, geohazards, public science, society

The moment for nuclear power to save us was twenty years ago – and it didn’t happen

Posted on September 17, 2022 by Chris Rowan

Via Dr. Jonathan Foley on Twitter, a recent opinion piece in the NYT argues that despite it remaining popular amongst some advocates, “Nuclear power still doesn’t make much sense”. The problem with nuclear is that we’ve been having the same conversation … Continue reading →

Categories: environment, society

How to spend a lot of money on a problem without making any progress in solving it, nuclear fusion edition

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Chris Rowan

I’ve been known on occasion to mock fusion for being eternally 25 years in the future, and this article on the latest potential advances doesn’t really help me assess how credible the people and approaches that star in it actually are. But … Continue reading →

Categories: climate crisis, society